level meter confusion!

Posted on Jun 03, 2005 11:28 am
mccarty
eeeeeeemo.
Member Since: Oct 30, 2003

hello all

so my soundcraft e12 arrived today! i just set it up and have been playing round with it for a good hour, worked great :). it's exactly what i was after!

however, i am having one sort of problem with it. it's nothing major cos i can work round it but...

first of all it'll help if i describe my signal path:

1: microphone running into mono input
2: mono jack tapping signal out of an insert, into a delta 66
3: delta 66 to cubase se audio track
4: output of cubase running to outs on delta 66
5: outs on delta 66 runing to playback in phonos (kinda like tape returns)
6: button marked "playback to monitors" pressed
7: monitors plugged into desk

so basically the signal goes mic > desk > delta > cubase > delta > desk > monitors

and all my faders are at unity gain on 0dB

now, i was setting the gain for a mic on an amp before. i began doing this by playing while turning up the gain and watching the master levels on the desk (these were showing the level of the playback from cubase). i barely had to turn the knob halfway to get it over 0 and into the red, so i lay off a little. i come to record a test track and i notice in cubase that the signal is in fact waaaay below 0dB, and is fact quite tiny!

so, i have another go, this time setting the level using the meters in cubase. i get the signal nice and big at around -5dB. but my desk meter is at the top led!

so then i just turned the gain knob up until the peak led on channel 1 lit up, and backed off a little. still the main meter says im way over 0!

SO, i try one last thing: i pressed the SOLO button on the channel my mic was running to, so that the signal would go direct from the channel strip to the main meter (as well as to cubase) and voila, cubase and desk say the same!

so this got me thinking - what is cubase and/or the delta doing to my signal on the way out, back to my desk? it appears to be boosting it quite considerably....? any ideas whats going on, or if theres any remedies for this?

like i said, when multitracking its not too much hassle to press the solo button on each track and set levels one at a time. would be nice to have one less button to press though!

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